It is often desirable to take cold drinks along when hiking, fishing, traveling or the like. Consequently, the present invention provides a lightweight, reusable container for carrying and cooling canned beverages.
Prior art cooling containers such as those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,401,535; 3,406,532; 3,436,932; 3,605,435; 3,703,816; and 3,802,220, employ slow warming cooling gels or other means of cooling, and come in a variety of designs and configurations, but none has contemplated use of the principle that heat rises and cold drops to more effectively retain canned beverages in a cold state. Moreover, none has recognized that the handling of bulky packages of freezing gels, such as "Blue Ice", can be an undesirable problem in refrigerator freezing compartments.
To prepare the cooling means for use it is necessary to place that part of the unit which contains the cooling means in a freezer; most likely the freezer compartment of a refrigerator. The present invention incorporates the cooling means in its lid which is not much larger than an ice cube tray. This is a significant improvement over the arrangements described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,401,535; 3,436,932; and 3,605,435, all of which have the cooling means located in the relatively large bottom portion of the container. Such an arrangement requires that a substantial amount of space be made available in the user's freezer compartment in order to prepare the cooling means for use. In addition, the cooling means of prior art containers are of considerable size and require long periods of time to freeze whereas the cooling means of the present invention requires only a few hours to be made ready for use.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide means for delivering heavier cold air to the lower portions of cooling compartments to surround the beverage cans with cold air.